Crystal Skulls Fake?

3072008

According to the Journal of Archeological Science, the crystal skulls, more specifically the two known crystal skulls held at the Brit­ish Mu­se­um and the Smith­so­nian In­sti­tu­tion in Wash­ing­ton are fake. Scientists believe that the skulls were make after the 19th century. Scientists came to this conclusion after using electron microscopy to analyse the method of creation of the skulls which unfortunately came out to be made by a rotary tool unavailable at the time of Ancient Mexico. This concept of the crystal skulls has been seen recently through the new “Indiana Jones” movie and throughout the internet depicting these skulls may lead or prevent destruction of the world.

As In­di­ana Jones rac­es to find an an­cient crys­tal skull in his new mov­ie ad­ven­ture, he might want to take a mo­ment to check its au­then­ticity.

New re­search sug­gests two well-known crys­tal skulls, in the Brit­ish Mu­se­um and the Smith­so­nian In­sti­tu­tion in Wash­ing­ton, are not, af­ter all, from an­cient Mex­i­co. Aca­demics now be­lieve the Brit­ish skull was made in 19th-cen­tu­ry Eu­rope and the Amer­i­can one even later.

The Brit­ish Mu­se­um bought its skull, a life-size carv­ing from a sin­gle block of rock crys­tal, from Tif­fa­ny and Co., New York, in 1897. Its ori­gins were un­known but there were sug­ges­tions it was of an­cient Mex­i­can or­i­gin.

Hu­man skulls worn as or­na­ments and dis­played on racks were known to have fea­tured in Az­tec art. The skull at­tracted much pub­lic at­ten­tion and specula­t­ion and was once thought to have heal­ing pow­ers.

Crys­tal skulls have since fea­tured in many books, ar­ti­cles and films, most re­cently in the new Ste­ven Spiel­berg mov­ie In­di­ana Jones and the King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull.

How­ev­er, there have been doubts about the au­then­ticity of the skull since the 1930s. Now an in­terna­t­ional re­search team has scru­tin­ized the Brit­ish Mu­se­um skull and a larg­er white quartz skull do­nat­ed to the Smith­so­nian in 1992.

Elec­tron mi­cro­scope anal­y­sis for tool marks found both skulls were carved with ro­ta­ry disc-shaped tool, a tech­nol­o­gy the an­cient Mex­i­cans didn’t have. Anal­y­sis of the quartz in the Brit­ish Mu­se­um skull sug­gests it was quar­ried from Bra­zil or Mad­a­gas­car – far out­side the An­cient Mex­i­cans’ trad­ing links.

The team, made up of ex­perts from Car­diff and King­ston uni­ver­s­ities in the U.K., the Brit­ish Mu­se­um and the Smith­so­nian, con­clud­ed that nei­ther skull could have been made in Mex­i­co be­fore the time of Co­lum­bus. They be­lieve the Brit­ish skull was cre­at­ed in Eu­rope in the 19th cen­tu­ry, and the Smith­so­nian’s shortly be­fore it was bought in Mex­i­co City in 1960.

“It is al­ways dis­ap­point­ing when an in­tri­guing ar­te­fact like a crys­tal skull turns out not to be gen­uine,” said Car­diff Uni­ver­s­ity’s Ian Free­stone, a mem­ber of the re­search team. “How­ev­er, it is im­por­tant to be pre­cise about what is au­then­tic and what is fake if we are prop­erly to un­der­stand our past. May­be In­di­ana Jones will have bet­ter luck in his hunt for a real crys­tal skul­l!”